Railway budget highlights 4

* Diamond quadrilateral to be launched for high-speed trains; Rs.100 crore allocated for taking project forward

* Trains on select routes to be speeded up to 160-200 km per hour

* Ticketing to be further modernised to issue 7,200 tickets per minute

* Land records need to be digitised for better utilisation; PPP mode to be explored for better management and revenue

* Innovation Incubation Centre to be set up

* 4,000 women constables recruited in RPF to make travel in women's coaches safer

* Pre-cooked ready-to-eat meals to be introduced

* Food courts to be introduced at major stations to provide regional flavour; pilot project on New Delhi-Amritsar and New Delhi-Jammu Tawi routes

 

* Forty percent increase in expenditure on cleanliness; CCTVs to monitor cleanliness at stations

* Special train on teachings of Swami Vivekananda

* Receipts in 2014-15 estimated at Rs.164,374 crore, expenditure at Rs.149,176 crore

* Fare revision will bring in Rs.8,000 crore; need another Rs.9,000 crore for golden quadrilateral project

* Backbone of supply chain of defence establishment

* Carry one billion tonnes of freight every year

* Decline in traffic growth in 2013-14

* Would require Rs.5 lakh crores in 10 years for modernisation

* Receipts in 2013-14 were Rs.139,550 crore; expenditure was Rs.130,321 crore

* Spend 94 paise of every rupee earned, leaving a surplus of only 6 paise

* With 12,500 trains, railways move 23 million passengers every day; equivalent to moving Australia's population

* Target to become largest freight carrier in the world